Updates and a Plea on the Closure of Recycled Reads

An opinion piece by Nancy Harris, Treasurer, CNA

First, if you have been meaning to contact the mayor and council members regarding the proposed closure of Recycled Reads (RR), please don’t delay. Council will have work sessions on August 5 and 7 to discuss the budget and plans to approve it between August 13 & 15. To have one email sent to the mayor and all the council members you can use this link: https://www.austintexas.gov/email/all-council-members Crestview is in District 7, and our Councilmember is Mike Siegel. His office phone number is 512-978-2107. If you are reading this from another district or want to target a specific councilmember, you can find phone numbers and send emails directly to them by clicking on their photo at this site: https://www.austintexas.gov/austin-city-council

So let’s look at what information the library staff is sharing and why what they are proposing is not logical. If you would like to share your feelings with council, it will also give you some points to make. If you have not already read the previous post, you may want to just to see what services RR offers.

After springing the closure of Recycled Reads on the public on July 11 when the budget was released, very little was know about exactly what the library had in mind when we were told that it would be “expanded” and “rebranded”. However it has become clear that the rebranded Recycled Reads will consist of some possible addition of an undetermined amount of shelving for used items called “Recycled Reads” at each library location. The tool library will be moved to the Zaragoza Warehouse and the passport services to the Yarborough Branch. The activities offered at RR will be absorbed by the various library’s meeting rooms. The lease on the current location ends in March, but closure would probably happen sooner as the building would have to be totally vacated by then.

Baylor Johnson, APL’s marketing program manager, has said, ”We’re definitely working on developing processes to try to make sure that what has made Recycled Reads unique is replicable throughout the system.” But he is missing the point of what makes RR unique.

Most of us have heard the expression “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts” that is generally attributed to Aristotle. This is the idea that when individual elements are combined, the resulting whole possesses qualities or capabilities that the individual elements do not have on their own. This concept, known as emergence, highlights the idea that interactions between components can create something new and more complex. Examples are a sports team, the human body, a mechanism made of various components, an ecosystem… you get the idea.

Recycled Reads definitely is an example of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. Its current form where patrons can find thousands of items in one location where they are categorized and alphabetized in no way compares to spreading those same items over 22 libraries. RR is a destination for citizens who go there to buy books, movies, music, ephemera, games, whatever. People go to libraries to check out books or use the computers; perusing the “sale” books is usually just a diversion simply because you happen to be in the vicinity.

Half the excitement of going to RR is in not knowing what wondrous treasures you may find. As someone who uses RR, I can say that it is a rare occasion when I have not left the store without something (well, usually several “somethings” that I may or may not have gone in to look for) in hand. I cannot remember the last time I purchased anything at a library. Recently, I spent 15 minutes observing the sale shelves at one of the branches (that appeared to have been expanded in anticipation of the closure of RR, although they were not full). Although the library was busy with people searching for books to check out and the computers were almost all taken, not one person approached the sale section. From there I went to RR where in the same 15 minutes, I found three generations – grandma to a small child – looking for children’s books, a young couple looking for movies, a older couple looking at older editions and out of print books on carts that had not been shelved yet, and several individuals inspecting the other offerings. Granted this was only a snapshot, but based on my personal experience a typical occurrence.

Library staff is justifying the closure because, according to them, the new “Recycled Reads” will be more “efficient”, “economical” and “equitable”.  According to them “It will be more efficient, as it will utilize and expand upon work processes and procedures which are already in place. Used book sales, which are already taking place at all APL branches, will be rebranded as “Recycled Reads” with broader selections.”. But what is efficient about asking people to go to 22 locations to look for items one might be interested in? Johnson says, “It would also reduce some of the costs associated with storing and transporting materials all to this one central location”. However the library system already has a place to store materials – it’s called Recycled Reads! And, it already has an interlibrary transportation system in place to convey material from one library location to another including RR.

According to city memos, “It will be more economical, not only because of the savings on storefront rent, but because we will also be entering into a partnership with Better World Books that will not only help us divert more materials away from landfills, but also pay us a percentage of the sales of materials we donate.” Yes, we will save on rent, but we will also be loosing a well-used, well-loved service to the citizens of Austin. It costs money to provide services to the people of Austin. Profitability should not be a factor just as we don’t expect our parks, fire department, Austin Resource Recovery, or any other service to the citizens to be profitable. RR is already providing low cost books and other materials to it citizens and avoiding unnecessary waste going into the landfill at the same time.

Council just approved the possibility of calling an election for the highest tax rate possible – don’t the people of Austin get to have a say in how that revenue will be spent? As for the partnership with Better World Books, current particulars indicate this would be some sort of consignment type deal where APL would get a percentage of any sales that BWB received if the books sold. Exactly how much is that percentage? Also, having a partnership with other booksellers does not mean that RR needs to go away. RR has already sold book titles that they have too many of or that sit on the shelf for long periods of time to other booksellers, usually for pennies. (The last numbers I have seen are from 2015 when Thrift Books was paying 12 cents a pound for materials.)

While it need not be tied to a specific location, it would be unreasonable, cost prohibitive and would greatly reduce the quality of the services RR provides to divide it into multiple locations. Going back to the idea that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, while the analogy isn’t perfect, consider this. You can give a wheel to a couple of people, a seat to another person, a pair of pedals to someone, brakes to another and a frame to someone. But unless you already have some of the parts and just happen to get the part you need or can somehow track down whomever else has the other parts, you don’t have a bicycle. But if all the parts are in one location, you can find the parts or even have a whole usable bike. You can split the materials that RR handles up between 22 libraries, and maybe yours will have what you want. But because you don’t have the complete bookstore, you have to somehow track down what you are looking for.

In a recent news article it was stated that closing RR would save the city money, “but that doesn’t mean the spirit of the store would cease to exist.” Given that we associate sprits with the dead, this somehow seems appropriate, as library management and city government have tried to murder RR for several years now. This award-winning program has fallen from grace with our city leaders who have tried to reduce it to a fraction of its area, neglected it and proposed outright closure. RR has survived so far because the citizens of Austin have let our leaders know they value it, and they have fought for it. In 2022, RR was voted the No. 1 little bookstore in Texas by Yelp users. Despite the fact that RR has not been given the attention to leadership or publicity it once had (the last post on Facebook was in 2022), it has continued to provide an important service to Austinites.

Many questions come up with the proposed new “expansion”. How much more work will this be for our already over-extended library staff? How can it be more efficient to process materials at multiple locations where other tasks have to be accomplished compared to a single location with that sole purpose? What reduction of the materials that people go to the libraries to actually use will there be to make room for the sale shelves? Will this mean that theft at the libraries which is already a problem becomes even more of a problem? How long will it be before the number of shelves of sale books slowly diminishes because it is easier to just box everything up and ship it off to Better World Books when the public isn’t looking anymore? Are there other options that would make RR even better, but aren’t being considered because city leaders don’t really want it to be successful?

Don’t let Recycled Reads become on of those things that people reminisce about when they think of the old Austin when things were affordable. The parts are not better than the whole, and the public isn’t buying it.